FSX Tweak

[Guest djprem]

I'm trying to move away from FS9 onto FSX.I would like to know what tweaks, guides or tweak applications users use for FSX so they get superb FPS?

[darem 84]

Here's the bible:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041But be prepared to experiment, some things differ from machine to machine.

[Turbine777 13]

Hi Danil, First off, you might want to rethink FPS when dealing with FSX. It is not the same. I have had very low fsp in FSX and it's still very smooth. It's not the same compared to what your use to.About 99% of tweaks your going to read are nothing more than personal preference. In other words, one might suggest low traffic settings, another with 1x Water,,, in most ways it comes down to what you prefer. I would read the above link over at least to read about which sliders are really doing what and how much draw they really do compared to the myths out there. It also heavily comes down to what addons your running and again, how your system is specced to handle your own settings.

[Guest djprem]

At the moment I don't have any add-ons only FSX Acceleration with the default settings FSX stutters occasional it just feels like it lagging. I know that my system is not the top gun but I'm sure it can handle FSX with much better and no stutter average FPS right now is 18fps.I would like to purchase PMDG 744 first and then maybe MD11 but I want to make the vanilla install smooth before purchasing.Before anyone recommend I cannot go done the Core i5/i7 route.

[Cuddly1956 1]

You'll find the biggest loss is turning the bloom effect on (mighty waste of resources) then water textures at the high end - reduce to mid and you should be ok. The other is road traffic and then air traffic but find a level that suits you.Don't worry about frame rates as long as it's smooth and it should be using a quad core cpu.The i5 has no hyperthreading but as fsx doesn't use that anyway.... I have the i7 myself and find hardly any issues. 4Gb ram is fine too and at a guess W7 64-bit?All mine is almost at the default settings and I find most 'tweaks' are a bit vague (watch me get flamed for that lol). Seems like the ATI card is the way to go now for fsx - has a few jaggies but doesn't suffer the Nvidia curse.My advice... find settings that suit YOU, not everyone else. You can also save settings for different scenarios.John Ellison

[Tabs 2,790]

There's really not that many tweaks for the cfg and stuff the way there was for FS9 - you just have to find the right combination of slider settings for your machine etc. Upgrading your CPU is the best "tweak" you can possibly make to FSX though.

[CapP 0]

There's an interesting topic about this on the Aerosoft forum, started with a pdf-file from Matthijs Kok.

[Tabs 2,790]

There's an interesting topic about this on the Aerosoft forum, started with a pdf-file from Matthijs Kok.

Yeah, I've commented on that document before when it came out - some of what he says is accurate, but some of it is also completely out in left field, like the claim that old hardware runs FSX best. That is completely false and I know it from personal experience. I'm trying to remember if it's his document or Nick's too that suggests shutting down a bunch of services and stuff, but we definitely do not recommend doing that either - in fact, a particular service being shut down was behind several support requests we had about the J41's FMS fonts not working. The alleged memory gain from doing stuff like that is trivial at best on a modern 64-bit machine and we tend to think Microsoft's OS team probably knows what they're doing moreso than some tweakers on a forum...

[Turbine777 13]

I agree 100%. I have mentioned in other forums that even though there is some good information in the post from Nick, there are a lot of things that are very unnecessary and personally cannot see any memory gains with shutting off the stated services. Disabling UAC I can see for obvious reasons and headaches but having done several of my own complete reinstalls/installs of various versions of Windows, do not see tweaking it's services a smart move or needed since OS's surpassed Win 98.There are also several reboots that are just not needed since new OS's don't need to be restarted for registry edits to be placed. Last but not least, the emphasis of the amount of defragging one needs to do to maintain a stable and fast FS experience. I have two velociraptors and have even with my drives before it, have only defragged once in a great while if at all. All these things seem to be related to very old hardware and OS's. It is good maintenance of course to do so, but don't think you'll see as much as 1 fps increase (unless of course your running a very veryyyy slow drive ie.Quatum bigfoot)Having FS and addons on a seperate drive from your OS is however good advice.My suggestions are above, but also as Ryan mentioned about the FSX.cfg, there isn't as many tweaks to it as there are in FS9. A lot of it is not needed in FSX.

[Gary A 8]

I agree 100%. I have mentioned in other forums that even though there is some good information in the post from Nick, there are a lot of things that are very unnecessary and personally cannot see any memory gains with shutting off the stated services. Disabling UAC I can see for obvious reasons and headaches but having done several of my own complete reinstalls/installs of various versions of Windows, do not see tweaking it's services a smart move or needed since OS's surpassed Win 98.There are also several reboots that are just not needed since new OS's don't need to be restarted for registry edits to be placed. Last but not least, the emphasis of the amount of defragging one needs to do to maintain a stable and fast FS experience. I have two velociraptors and have even with my drives before it, have only defragged once in a great while if at all. All these things seem to be related to very old hardware and OS's. It is good maintenance of course to do so, but don't think you'll see as much as 1 fps increase (unless of course your running a very veryyyy slow drive ie.Quatum bigfoot)Having FS and addons on a seperate drive from your OS is however good advice.My suggestions are above, but also as Ryan mentioned about the FSX.cfg, there isn't as many tweaks to it as there are in FS9. A lot of it is not needed in FSX.

Dan, I just wanted to comment without hijacking the thread so I am riding on your back here, nothing specific to you or your comments.I never believed a word that NickN or any other poster on this wide world of anonymous internet ever wrote. Heck I have been telling my kids for years

[CapP 0]

Yeah, I've commented on that document before when it came out - some of what he says is accurate, but some of it is also completely out in left field, like the claim that old hardware runs FSX best.

I agree with you. The document is good resource concerning fsx settings. As is stated in the topic on the aerosoft forum, Mathijs' comments about hardware should not be taken to serious.

[Guest SK8TRBOI747]

Best kept FSX "Tweak" secret? If you have DX10 hardware (check your vid card specs and you must be running Vista or Win 7) make sure the "DirectX 10 Preview" button is checked in Settings. You will experience a huge (20%+) increase in FPS, all other settings being equal.I know some may start flaming, due to the occasional "blinking" runway surface (which can be eliminated, pretty much) with DX10, but a lot of work went into it by Phil Taylor and others at the former ACES team (along with direct multicore assistance from Intel) and DX10 'checked' is the way to go on all modern hardware.IMHOCheers!(My setup: homebuilt Core i7-920 OC to 3.2Ghz, 6GB RAM, DFI Lan Party Jr. microATX motherboard, Vista Ultimate 64, old Compaq case from previous computer...all in cost June '09? USD$989)

[darem 84]

I beg to differ. I DO have excellent DX10 hardware, but I don't see any performance increase with DX10. DX10 nullifies my HQ NHancer settings, forces me to do AA in FSX - and thus is even SLOWER than my optimized DX9 setup. Your mileage may vary, but mine isn't good at all with DX10.

[Turbine777 13]

I beg to differ. I DO have excellent DX10 hardware, but I don't see any performance increase with DX10. DX10 nullifies my HQ NHancer settings, forces me to do AA in FSX - and thus is even SLOWER than my optimized DX9 setup. Your mileage may vary, but mine isn't good at all with DX10.

Sign your full name in posts in this forum or put it in your sig per rules, thanks.DX10 preview does work for some people. Not sure why, but they sometime too experience the flashing of the textures on the rwy and have the disapearing progressive taxi line. But there have been a lot of people that swear by it. Just check out youtube.For me personally, it adds more headache then anything, and that was with DX10 hardware and Vista64. It is an unfinished and quite broken option to many of us.Dan Prunier (Just incase my sig isnt working)

[Tabs 2,790]

I think Nick's guide is largely good, though I find a few of his assertions like "FS is a simulator, not a game, so you have to do X differently" to be a bit silly. Game engines are game engines, FSX just happens to be a particularly CPU-bound one, which is why it runs so poorly compared to modern engines like the Unreal Engine, Source Engine, CryEngine etc. Just because this particular application of a game engine is to produce a realistic simulation doesn't mean it's no longer a game engine bound by the same rules others are with respect to hardware and such. The assertions about FSX not being "designed for" Vista or Win7's "memory system" are also dubious - ACES actually used Vista when they created it. It supports Vista/Win7's Games dialog in the Start Menu and it supports DX10, which wouldn't even be possible if it they hadn't designed and tested on it.His nHancer setting suggestions are directly taken from something I wrote almost three years ago on the Nvidia forums. I solved the issues with AA and AF not working, figured out that 8XS was the best AA mode, figured out the Clamp setting for stopping shimmering etc:http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=38921His suggestions about the number of defrags and whatnot may be over the top, but I do think running an O&O Complete/NAME on your FSX drive once every month or so is a good idea. Keeping your OS clean and free of extraneous crapware running in the background is definitely huge too. The real solution for that HD related stuff is getting an SSD though... It's defintely not necessary to reboot Windows every time you install something like he says though - the registry is dynamic and does not require this unless the program asks for it, especially in Win 7. (you can even install video drivers without a reboot in Win7)Anything you see in tweak guides related to shutting down built-in Windows services, deleting prefetch data and so on is pure snake oil and should not be done. Particularly bad is the suggestion to shut down SuperFetch - a lot of people assume this is the same as XP and earlier's old "Indexing" service that was in fact a major performance killer - it's not, it uses free RAM to cache things dynamically so that the system is more responsive. It's using free RAM as a very fast SSD for loading programs basically. Vista and Win7 will feel noticeably slower if you shut that service down.Are his suggestions largely good? Yes. Are they solely his work or worthy of him being deified in the community like he's been as a result? No.